CURRENT ISSUES OF DIGITAL LIBRARY PERFORMANCE
INDICATORSINJAPANAESE

ACADEMIC

LIBRARYSTATISTICS
Shin’ya Kato

Yamagata University Library, 1-4-12 kojirakawa-machi, Yamagata 990-8560, Japan
E-mail: skato@jm.kj.yamagata-u.ac.jp

INTRODUCTION

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) has published "Library
Statistics of Colleges and Universities" from the 1966 fiscal year as academic library statistics of ourcountry every year. Although the statistics have detailed statistics items, since the figures are summarizedaccording to the banding of colleges and universities1, the figures of each college and universities areunknown. On the other hand, although the statistics item of "The Library of Japan" which Japan LibraryAssociation (JLA) has published from 1952 fiscal year every year is simplified, since the figures of eachacademic libraries is shown, these two statistics are used together in many cases. These statistics haverevised the measures corresponding to change of academic libraries operations or services. Especially,measures such as 1) Library websites 2) CD-ROM and DVD-ROM services 3) Library services viawebsites were added to digital library functions in "Library Statistics of Colleges and Universities" in the1997 fiscal year. The number of academic libraries which offers the databases and the electronic journals
via network, and its contents became clear by this. From the 2000 fiscal year, the number of electronic
journals was adopted by the statistics.

THE NECESSITY OF MEASURES FOR DIGITAL LIBRARY FUNCTIONS

However, the present academic library is the so-called hybrid library where the traditional library function
and the digital library function are intermingled, and these measures are insufficient for this evaluation.
For this reason, The Library Performance Measures Working Group of the Association of National
University Libraries prepared “A Report of the Performance Measures of University Libraries” referringto the early researches such as ARL E-metrics Project and EQUINOX Project in 2002.
1Colleges and universities are classified according to the number of faculties
A: 8 or more faculties B: 5-7 faculties C: 2-4 faculties D: 1 facultyThe report contained 1) digital documents produced in house 2) electronic journals 3) databases 4) digitalreference services 5) use of other digital documents as measures of digital library functions. Althoughevaluation of digital library functions were tried as a part of self-assessment in Tohoku University Library,Nagoya University Library, Yamagata University Library, etc. based on this, it is in the situation it cannot
be told to the whole National University Libraries that it is established.

CURRENT TRENDS
On the other hand, “SCONUL Statistics”2 which is annual statistics of the academic libraries in U.K.,
and ”ARL Statistics”3 which is annual statistics of the research library in the U.S. are going to add theitem of e-metrics and large amendment. In our country, construction of a university information databasefor university evaluation has been developing by The National Institution for Academic Degrees andUniversity Evaluation (NIAD-UE). Although the statistics of operations and services of academic library
are included in the university information database, what is taken up as measures of digital libraryfunctions at the present stage seems to be only the number of subscribed database, and the number ofsubscribed electronic journals.

TOWARDS ESTABLISHING NEW FRAMEWORKAs of the 2002 fiscal year, it averages in the National Universities, 3,900 or more titles of the subscribed
electronic journals was introduced by the electronic journals introduction budget at which the MEXT
started distribution from the 2002 fiscal year, and the expenditure was 30 million yen per university by it.
It costs expenditure to introduce the electronic resources and cause the accountability of the effect of theintroduction in the university for the stakeholder. Therefore, it seems that the maintenance of academic tylibrary statistics including the performance indicators for the digital library functions as possible the crosscountry comparison, and provide reliability and validity is immediately necessary. In this paper, theperformance indicators for digital library functions will be examined based on standards and initiatives ,such as 1）ARL E-Metrics 4 2) E-measures Project5 3) ICOLC6 4) COUNTER7 5) NISO8 6) ISO9 7)
EQUINOX10, from three aspects -- electronic resources, services, and cost --11, and it proposes about thenew framework of the digital library performance indicators for the current academic library statistics inJapan12.
2

http://www.sconul.ac.uk/pubs_stats/stats.html

3

http://www.arl.org/stats/arlstat/4http://www.arl.org/stats/newmeas/emetrics/index.html

5

http://www.ebase.uce.ac.uk/emeasures/index.htm

6

http://www.library.yale.edu/consortia/2001webstats.htm

7

http://www.projectcounter.org/

8

http://www.niso.org/

9

ISO TR20983: Performance Indicators for Electronic Library Services

10

http://equinox.dcu.ie/

11

A selected comparison across initiatives and standards, see Planning and evaluating library networked

services and resources. Edited by John Carlo Bertot and Denise M. Davis. Libraries Unlimited, 2004.
p.127-158.
12

Minimum set of new performance indicators for digital library functions, see Table 1.

Table 1 Minimum set of new performance indicators for digital library functions aa.

Electronic Resources (e-resources)
・Electronic journals
Number of subscribed electronic full-text journals
・Databases
Number of subscribed databases
・E-books
Number of purchased or licensed e-books
・Digital documents produced in house
Number of digital documents produced in houseb.

Services
・Virtual visits
Number of hits on the library website
・Digital reference questions
Procedural/directional questions received electronically during sample week
Electronic resources related questions received electronically during sample week
・Full-text articles requests
Successful requests for full-text journal articles
Turnaways form full-text journals
・Database sessions and searches
Successful session on databases
Total database searches performed during all sessions
Turnaways from databases
・Use of E-books
Successful accesses to e-books
Turnaways form e-books
・Use of digital documents produced in house
Number of sessions on digital documents produced in house

c.

Costs
・Electronic journals
Subscriptions to electronic full-text journals
・Databases
Subscriptions to databases
・E-books
Expenditures on e-books
・Digital documents produced in house
Expenditures on digital documents produced in houseaBased on e-measures project